


Bright Dead Things

by sewnbythecolourofgreen



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2019-01-25 14:30:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12533736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sewnbythecolourofgreen/pseuds/sewnbythecolourofgreen
Summary: What eats at Will the very most is that if she hadn't been caught in the explosion, he might never have known at all.





	Bright Dead Things

**Author's Note:**

> Procrastination as I put off 1) the longer fic I'm working on, and 2) the paper I'm supposed to be writing. 
> 
> I wanted to call this "Ironman", but cyanidebats told me this was the wrong audience for a debate joke. Title credit, as is, to Ada Limón.

March 2010

His apartment resembles the opening shot of a horror film—swathed in darkness and a floor covered in children's toys. 

Will stares down a the—finally—sleeping body in the (newly-purchased) crib that has invaded his living room. He hears the door to the apartment open behind him but doesn't turn, looking for any signs of the noise disturbing the bundle of blankets. "What'd you think of the show?" he asks. 

"I have it PVRed." a voice behind him replied. "Took a late flight. He asleep?"

Will nods. "Out like a light."

With a thud, Jim Harper let his duffel bag drop to the floor as he approached the crib.  "Do you think he cries enough? It's bad, right, if kids don't cry? It means something's wrong with them?"

Will bristles a little at the notion of something  _being wrong_ , however likely it may be. "I think he's just a quiet kid."

"Didn't get that from his mother." Jim comments. 

"No, I guess he didn't." Will glances at Jim's face, half-lit by the bleeding of the lamp in his study, watches his jaw tighten. "Couch or hotel cash?"

"Couch. Put that shit towards your kid."

 

 

 

_iNews-2/11/2012- ONE AMERICAN DEAD IN EXPLOSION OUTSIDE ISLAMABAD STOCK EXCHANGE_

What eats at Will the very most is that if she hadn't been caught in the explosion, he might never have known at all. 

In the wake of MacKenzie McHale's death, Charlie Skinner offered him time off, his guest room, several bottles of expensive liquor, anything else he could think of ( _I haven't seen her in three years, Charlie. I'm fine._ ) Nothing he could have offered, however, would have prepared Will for the Monday after the memorial service (which he blew off, opting instead to anonymously donate a substantial figure to the charity suggested by her obituary). The morning Jim Harper showed up on the 21st floor of the AWM building with a squirming toddler in his arms. "Seventeen months." He nervously but determinedly met Will's eyes. "It's, um... it's in her will that you get custody." 

That night, Elliot Hirsch anchored in prime time. Alone. 

 

 

 

There's a birth certificate that names him as the father. The date on it would have made MacKenzie just shy of two weeks pregnant when she moved out of her apartment and into a war zone, undetectable by a drug store urine test. Will takes whatever solace he can get from that, when he thinks about it—there are some secrets she would not have had the heart to keep from him. He's certain (except on the nights when he's not) that this was it, the subject of the emails and voicemails he deleted and the letters he threw out.  _Will, I'm pregnant. Will, I need your help. Will, please._

( _There's not much I can tell you,_ Jim had said the night they met. _About her son. Honestly, I can't_.

Will replied, voice breaking.  _What about her?_ )

He wonders, sometimes, about a paternity test—this kid is all Mac and none of him, and he knows there's a history there with dark eyes and brown hair—then feels like shit for even thinking of it. 

Mostly, he wonders why she didn't march back into the newsroom to tell him. Letters, emails, sure—but he had still been  _there_ , for years, it wasn't like she didn't know where to find him. He does not know why, and now has no one to ask. 

Jim, on this subject, is no help at all. He answers questions in the blank, perfunctory manner of someone whose signature is on a non-disclosure form somewhere. Yes, she did everything she could to keep him safe. No, he wasn't at the explosion. No, I can't tell you where. The big one: No, CNN didn't know. But don't repeat that. 

She was a good mother, he always ended. She was good with him and a good mother. 

Jim has picked up work in Washington. He comes down twice a month, is met with grabby hands and a gurgling which resembles his name. He is cried for when he leaves (something Will has yet to experience). He is the one who keeps the single copy of MacKenzie's will—which would never hold up in a court of law, and was never expected to—three handwritten pages of directives trusted implicitly by all involved parties (including her parents). Those pages (written, Jim at one point alludes, in an army hospital post-stabbing under the influence of enough morphine to make anything she said unreliable) are the reason Will has custody (legally, it's the birth certificate, but it was the will that stopped overtures from her parents, they're all so far past _legally_ by now) and the reason Jim Harper is godfather. 

 

 

 

When Jim isn't around, the kid comes to work with Will. Daycare had felt wrong, even hiring someone felt wrong. (This was _MacKenzie's_ child, Will couldn't put him away like that). Don is surprisingly good about it, lets him play with a disconnected section of the control board during the show. Or hands him off the Sloan Sabbith, who earned a five-minute time slot on the condition of a mandated wardrobe. Sloan takes him on weekends sometimes, too, and they watch Pixar movies Will is certain the kid is too young to understand. 

On Wednesdays, Will skips the eleven o'clock rundown to visit the pediatrician. Despite an inauspicious upbringing (presumably; Will can't exactly claim to know), the doctor isn't concerned with anything other than speech—by eighteen months, a vocabulary of between six and twelve words is typical. By contrast, his son has yet to be coaxed to say anything other than muddled versions of "Mummy" and "Jim", both infrequently. 

Will is told he needs to talk more—in the car, while cooking, any time he can. He doesn't know any nursery rhymes, but he's told it doesn't matter—cadence and inflection are more important than meaning. The pediatrician suggests narrating what he's doing (Now we stop for the red light, now we run your bath) but it feels awkward and stilted and Will gives up after a few days. You can say anything, he figures, if you inflect properly, so he reads aloud from his half-written scripts in his office, and recites anything he can think of at home (The _woods_ are  _love_ -ly, _dark_ and  _deep_ ). 

 

 

 

Things settle. Jim comes, and goes. Washington isn't working out, he's fired from CNN and is advised to 'geographically expand his job search'. 

("Would that work?" Will asks.

"If I did local news for a few years, yeah, probably. But—" He doesn't need to say it. He can't leave the East Coast.)

When Jim ends up inebriated at Will's, which is often the case (at other times too, Will suspects, probably most nights, but then again, he’s not doing much better), he tells him more about Mac, about how she left and what she was like when she was with him. He tells the story, once, barely conscious, of the bullet wound in his ass. “It was her fault.” he slurs. “And I knew that, but I didn’t mind.”

“How long did you stay?” Will asks. “After that?”

“Two years.”

 

 

 

“So, where is baby McAvoy now?” Habib asks lightly. 

“McHale-McAvoy.” Will corrects. “And, he’s with, um dayside. Sloan Sabbith, she’s the—”

“I know who Sloan Sabbith is.” Habib says with a faint smile. “You must trust her a lot, to have her take care of him.”

Will isn’t sure what he’s supposed to say to that. “Yeah.”

“You barely remember her name.”

He waves a hand dismissively. “MacKenzie was always big on—office families. Being close with the people you work with.”

“So, because that’s what MacKenzie would have wanted, that’s how you think you should raise your son?”

Will almost corrects him, almost says _her son_ , but catches himself.

Later, “What’s the difference between you and Jim Harper?”

Flatly. “Jim Harper stayed when Mac fucked up.”

 

 

 

 

Mostly though, in the nights, it’s Will and the baby. He plays Mac’s favorite songs on guitar, frustrated when they don’t stop the crying; he tries to contain his resentment when the boy prefers “Hippos Go Berzerk” to the well-loved copy of “Madeline” her parents sent him, the one she’d had as a child.

“Will,” Charlie says to him one night. “He’s your _son_. He’s not a locket. Do you—sometimes I think, when you look at him, you see too much of her.”

Charlie’s wrong, of course. He _only_ sees her.  

 

 

 

What eats at him the most is that this is before/after, MacKenzie/Baby, and, given the option, he wouldn’t choose the latter.

What eats at him the most is that he can _feel_ himself becoming his father.

And he knows what he needs to do.

 

 

 

He meets Jim in Arrivals. “What’s wrong?” Jim asks. “I wasn’t going to come for another—”

Will holds the toddler in his arms out towards him. “Take him. I can’t do this.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
